Apple is again back in legal headlines, Tuesday suing handset maker HTC for allegedly infringing 20 unspecified iPhone patents. HTC has designed a number of smartphones powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system.

The lawsuit, filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court of Delaware, points to the iPhone patents covering user interface and associated architecture and hardware, reports said.“We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours,” Apple co-founder Steve Jobs charged in a statement. Jobs said the company could choose to do nothing or act on its allegations. “We decided to do something about it,” he said.

Today’s words echo an early statement when Apple countersuedNokia, claiming the Finnish company infringed 13 patents held by the Cupertino, Calif. company. “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president said in a statement at the time.

The lawsuit against HTC is just the latest in a legal back-and-forth involving Apple and a number of other companies. The ITC recently agreed to investigate Nokia’s and Apple’s competing claims, as well as a lawsuit Kodak filed, alleging the iPhone infringed its patented image preview technology.

About the author

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address) | Read more posts by Ed Sutherland.